


a two a.m., eternal

by ilia



Category: Given (Anime), Given (Manga)
Genre: Insomnia, Just some canon-typical whatever the hell their relationship is, M/M, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilia/pseuds/ilia
Summary: Akihiko visits Ugetsu’s bed reeking of a woman's perfume.
Relationships: Kaji Akihiko/Murata Ugetsu
Comments: 8
Kudos: 84





	a two a.m., eternal

It’s the darkest hours of the night, and Murata Ugetsu flirts with sleep.

Insomnia is a concept he’s long become close with. Since he was a boy it’s plagued him, long nights kept awake brutal and tempestuous, where he would rake his nails into his scalp and wonder with tears in his eyes just what it was wrong with him. Now, insomnia lingers, too many years’ worth of sleepless nights for Ugetsu to dredge up the energy to combat it. Now, there’s only the resignation that the following days will be an insipid blur.

He flirts with sleep tonight as he has many nights before, dancing upon the precipice, the remnants of a tune in his ears and as his tongue as he slides along the sheets to a cooler area. This time, it’s Shostakovich, a proud array of notes; his fingers move unconsciously as the melody gains momentum while bare feet slip along silken sheets, pulling and twisting them every which way.

His blankets are a ruined mess of wrinkles. They will need a wash.

He’s alone, and keenly aware of that fact. A body beside him and a satisfying fuck, an orgasm or two would help him sleep more than anything else, but Ugetsu is careful not to dwell on the unfilled expanse of his mattress for too long. He has been this way before; lonely, sleep deprived, and considering the merits of a cup of coffee and a night spent up with his violin instead. He will be this way again.

Ugetsu burrows into the woolen turtleneck he’s worn to bed and has convinced himself of one last attempt at the elusive sleep when the lock at the top of the stairs clicks.

Footfalls are light as they descend the concrete, and Ugetsu remains still. He can recognize Akihiko by sound alone, the gentle, quiet nature of his steps an eternal contradiction to the otherwise imposing body.

Akihiko deposits his keys on the counter, and his things on the floor. There are a series of muffled sounds as his clothes come off and nightclothes on. All of it careful and quiet. Akihiko is no stranger to Ugetsu’s sleeplessness, the demons that nudge him into the waking world when he is just about to drift away. He learned it harder than anyone, stayed up with Ugetsu as he shivered from an anxiety-induced fever after three days without a wink, as they gripped at one another desperately to relieve stress, any stress, anything to get him down, to make Ugetsu human again. Akihiko knows that when Ugetsu sleeps, he is not to be awoken for anything short of worldwide calamity—and even then, perhaps not.

There’s an ugly tightness in Ugetsu’s chest, and he resists rubbing at it. Things were so easy back in their school days, when a fuck could settle all the problems in the world, when the fucking only happened between them both.

—Akihiko lifts the covers and crawls into bed, and Ugetsu smells perfume. It’s something sick and flowery, something that tries much too hard to be noticed, and anger coils in his gut; Ugetsu wants to hit him. That he wears a lover’s perfume into Ugetsu’s bed is the last straw in Akihiko’s lackluster housemate abilities.

Still, Akihiko draws near, and Ugetsu keeps his breathing even as he approaches, eyes closed, steady and compartmentalized as though his chest hasn’t ruptured at the scent of Chanel.

Akihiko is so close, Ugetsu can feel the heat of what he knows to be a broad, tattooed chest at his back. An arm fits around Ugetsu’s waist tenderly.

For a giant such as Akihiko, the way he approaches Ugetsu during these nights is uncharacteristically timid. Like a child who knows full well he is getting away with an action forbidden; a man wrapped up in addiction’s harsh fingers, convinced one last hit will get him well.

Ugetsu grits his jaw, still as a corpse. Despite the ruptures between them both, Akihiko still sees fit to wrap Ugetsu in him in the dead of night. Akihiko tucks Ugetsu away like a secret.

A bitterness coats Ugetsu’s tongue. He can now taste women’s perfume. He is going on two nights without sleep. His joints are coated in ice, his bed has been empty far too long. It’s his bed, his covers that Akihiko rubs a woman’s smell over. It’s his Akihiko that she has sullied.

His, from the touches they shared in the music room of their high school that seared through Ugetsu’s flesh and exposed the cavities in him he never knew had to be filled. Since the first kiss they shared underneath pouring Tokyo summer rain that taught Ugetsu what it was like to prefer being broken over whole.

Ugetsu’s hips roll back until they are flush with the heat behind them.

It’s a movement as natural as anything, easy enough to dismiss as a motion of a sleeping body. That Akihiko’s breath stutters is nothing to Ugetsu more than a symptom of the tenuous chemistry that still plagues them both; the clenching of his fingers is minute, controlled.

Ugetsu rolls his hips again, and Akihiko’s reaction is more violent. A mouth ripe with metal presses a groan through wiry hair to the nape of Ugetsu’s neck. The hand upon Ugetsu’s hip tightens.

He can feel Akihiko’s erection slotted hot between his buttocks. It ignites something in Ugetsu’s chest, a yearning with claws. A possessiveness that is raw and ugly and full of holes, but god, at least Ugetsu can say it is his.

“I take it she didn’t satisfy you to your liking,” he breathes, dry across the mangled bedsheets of his sleepless nights.

There’s a surprised tension in Akihiko’s muscles, a quiet that dirties the precious moments between them both before he speaks. “No.”

There’s only that. No lying, no delusions the both of them are still operating under. When all two people do is try to rip and tear and hurt to their heart’s content, there is no reason to be anything more or less than honest. Honesty is the meanest form of torture out of them all.

“You sleep with some whore.” Ugetsu’s hips roll as he talks, and the reaction he garners from Akihiko, oh, it’s like a drug, it pumps into his veins and has his blood singing a strangled song of need. “You sleep with some whore and don’t even wash before you come into my bed.”

Akihiko’s arms have wound so tightly around Ugetsu’s chest that Ugetsu will have bruises the following morning. Against his rear, Ugetsu can feel his bedmate throb, desperate.

He can’t breathe for the way it turns him on. He can’t breathe for the way he wants to be hurt tonight.

“I hope you didn’t hold her like this,” he tries, one more time, sick of the control he feels Akihiko exerting against his spine. Enough, already. Sleep may have dulled his senses, but it does nothing to his tongue; the disgusting perfume sneaks into his nose one more time, and his flesh prickles. “You might just break a woman's rib with this grip.”

“Quiet.” Akihiko snaps the word into Ugetsu’s ear, and Ugetsu grits his teeth in victory. Large hands work their way up his turtleneck; they tweak at the metal bars through Ugetsu’s nipples. Ugetsu arching his back earns him another strangled sound from Akihiko. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Make me.”

There are teeth at his neck, and Ugetsu’s cry of pain mingles with relief. Sensation descends his spine, and curls his toes. His eyes are still closed, his flesh alight; his restraint vanished with the second sleepless night, warm thoughts cooling against his frigid bed.

He submits.

He tugs up the hem of his turtleneck, and Akihiko’s hands do the rest. They tear it off so quickly that Ugetsu’s teeth clack as the tight neck is wrenched off from around his head, and he sweeps the hair from his face as Akihiko struggles with his own. When they touch again, it is with the fire of flesh on flesh, of months’ acidic abstinence that has worn them thin.

Akihiko’s mouth finds Ugetsu’s wrist, and Ugetsu swears he can feel the ice that has encased his skinny body begin to melt away.

It’s a process so slow, he doesn’t even notice it happening, the way the cold, empty bed haunts Ugetsu even when he’s spending the night apart from it—in another country with only his violin for company, or in a foreign bed with a new smell and especially soft sheets learning the touches of a new lover, learning how to touch their spots so that they sing like an instrument all their own. The way he stays out, later and later, so as not to look at the empty apartment for any longer than he must, or the patch of concrete where Akihiko’s heavy metal bike should be parked.

Akihiko’s hand wraps around Ugetsu’s cock, and he fucking melts.

“ _Aki_ ,” he moans, and there’s no time to be quiet. Not even the prospect of tomorrow can keep Ugetsu from indulging now. Behind him, Akihiko shudders and whines and sucks bruises into Ugetsu’s shoulder. The air in the dark, cool basement tastes of desperation.

—When Ugetsu mounts Akihiko, he finally opens his eyes.

Underneath him, Akihiko is wrecked. His eyes have blown with need, a flush has spread across his cheeks, his tattooed chest, the strain of his own erection. Their gazes tangle, and Ugetsu smirks down at Akihiko. He knows that Akihiko would rather take him, hard and fast until they are both done and too sore to move or even clean the cum from one another’s bellies, until they fall asleep tangled in one another and the ruined bedsheets.

But Ugetsu wants to be fucking watched, wants to put on a show.

It elates him almost as much as it does to step fully clothed onto a stage with his violin in hand and the power of his music at his command, the way that Akihiko reacts as Ugetsu reaches for the lube left out brazenly, _shamelessly_ beside his vibrator upon the bedside table. He is thirsty for this admiration in a way that can only be quenched one way, the song only their bodies can sing.

—He falls on Akihiko’s erection without preamble and earns himself a moan. The pain that tears through him from not bothering to prepare himself, oh, Ugetsu worships it like a god.

He fucks Akihiko as though he is the only lover Ugetsu has ever known.

“Tell me I’m pretty.” 

Akihiko’s fingernails press crescents into the flesh of Ugetsu’s hips, pretty hips, women’s hips, supple and accommodating. Dark, wiry hair catches on Ugetsu's lashes as a look containing fire meets the need in Akihiko’s green eyes. “Tell me I’m the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen."

“Fuck, Uge.” Akihiko’s usual reprimand at Ugetsu’s mercilessly self-centered behavior is lost to the void. “You’re gorgeous."

There’s an uncertainty in Akihiko’s voice, the way it wavers, an asterisk on each of his movements and every inch of bare, ivory flesh that he paints red with his fingertips. They shouldn’t be doing this, not again, not when every touch and affectionate word spun between them both sends them deeper into the hole they’ve dug in each other’s hearts.

But god, Ugetsu can’t resist.

Akihiko plays him like a well-beloved instrument; he is turned, and twisted, he is thrown against the bed. When Akihiko enters him again, Ugetsu feels fire. When Akihiko’s hand wraps around him, Ugetsu hears music, more loudly than before.

There’s nothing in the world but Akihiko. There’s no reason to continue living if not for Akihiko in his bed, his life, his heart.

“I love you,” Ugetsu is gasping, pulse pounding a tattoo in his ears, restraint in shambles, every movement of Akihiko inside of him bringing him closer to a teetering edge and an endless drop. “I love you. I love you. Aki. Please.”

Akihiko sobs in Ugetsu’s ear, and tightens his grip. And Ugetsu wants to die.

They come apart at once in a practiced tensing, keening, moaning. They come apart, eardrums too blown to hear, sweat slicking the places their bodies touch.

Akihiko falls into the bed, and Ugetsu remains on his hands and knees. Beneath him, his bedsheets are ruined. At his back, he is remarkably cold.

Long fingers twist in the bedsheets for a minute longer. At his side, there is silence from Akihiko. He can still smell perfume.

He leaves the bed, hair in his face, toes dragging along the floor as he follows the well-worn path towards the little bathroom at the kitchenette’s far side. The residue of their fuck slips down his thighs as he goes.

The bathroom’s flourescent lights are blaring, so he goes without. He doesn’t need to see, anyway. Ugetsu knows his eyes to be reddened with the lackluster sleep that has plagued him his whole life, the cigarettes and liquor that get him through the particularly empty days.

And now, from the tears that wet his cheeks as he goes.

Ugetsu turns the water in the shower to scalding, and wonders how much it would hurt to drown.

He shivers beneath the spray, tears mixing with the burning water as it rolls off of his face. Nails pierce the side of his neck, trailing along raw flesh that will deepen into bruises in the following days, marks from Akihiko that will last longer than this attempt at their relationship. Burning water turns him raw, and washes away the grime.

The door opens and closes again; even in the darkened corner of the shower stall, Ugetsu feels raw, humbled, exposed. Akihiko hisses as the shower water hits his flesh.

“It doesn’t have to be so hot,” he complains. “Feel like my skin’s gonna melt off my bones.”

“I like it like this.”

When fingers wrap around his waist, he gasps at the way they seem to penetrate the tender flesh. When Akihiko’s lips meet his, Ugetsu tastes Tokyo rain.

“We shouldn’t.” No words feel right after the confessions that had corroded his tongue in the bed. “We shouldn’t have.”

Akihiko's fingers tighten. In the dark of the bathroom, neither can see the other's shame. They can only reach for the other with hungry fingers and, for a night, pretend.

“I don’t care tonight," Akihiko tells Ugetsu, and Ugetsu thinks it's one of the more beautiful things he's heard. His jaw rests against Akihiko’s clavicle. It finds its favorite spot out of habit alone. The tears slip down Akihiko's chest with the water, silent.

“Tell me you were thinking about me.”

There’s a tension in Akihiko’s voice as he answers. “Always.” A pause. “Even when I don’t want to."

“Good.”

Ugetsu rests his body more heavily upon Akihiko as the water pours into his hair and descends in rivulets down the line of his back. When his knees give way, Akihiko’s arms are there to hold him upright.

**Author's Note:**

> Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by Given~
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/iliawrites)!


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